Despite what most people think, the traditional movement wasn't entirely a backlash against slick, modern style. Sure style mattered, but when you got right down to the primer level, the thing that got the bias-ply tires rolling on the traditional movement was cost. It sounds implausible if you're fairly new to this old-car thing, but wishbones, stretched axles, Stromberg carburetors, and wheezy old Flatheads were everywhere not all that long ago...and you could buy 'em for nothing.
But not for long. The prices of those parts spiraled once a few renegades with style built cool cars from them. Pretty soon a down-and-dirty traditional-themed car cost as much or more than its high-tech counterparts. And once that happened, just about anything was fair game whether or not it was cool. All it had to be was old and cheap, which explains the existence of things like tractor grilles and heavy-truck wheels on cars that allegedly represent a bygone age.
Believe it or not, that handful of renegades is still building righteous-looking cars out of the parts that everybody overlooks. And just as the Flathead-powered, disc-wheeled cars they built stood out among the shiny billet ones a generation ago, the cars they're building now look distinctive. They're traditional in the sense that they're built with old parts, but the way they put those parts together is anything but. Bill Ross is one of those renegades. He builds about a car a year, and this cabriolet is his latest. It now belongs to Chris Hagen in Lake Forest Park, Washington, but for the sake of the story let's let Bill tell it.
"This is a real bastard we're dealing with here," he began. "It started life as a '29 Sport Coupe--the coupe with the soft top that didn't fold down." But what he did to it was as uncommon as the body itself. Instead of trying to make it into a roadster--a coupester as people call them--he transformed it into a cabriolet...sort of. "I cut the windshield posts off and used a '31 Ford Cabriolet windshield opening. That's the first year the posts leaned back." he said, adding that he clipped the posts about 3 inches in the process.
Bill then cut off the door tops and finished them to resemble cabriolet doors. He separated the window channels from the door window frames and split them at the top of the A-pillars. Finally, he welded the forward channels to the A-pillars and the remainder to what eventually became the top frame, but we're getting ahead of ourselves in describing that. The windows have to be rolled down an inch or so for the doors to open since the channel captures the glass as it did in the original door frames; however, the design redeems itself by fully sealing the interior as if it were in a true closed-cab car.
For the chassis, "I laid two 2x3 rectangle tubes, about 6 feet long, on a pair of 4x4s. Then I set the body on them and went from there," he explained. He then rolled the axles in place and stepped the frame up to meet the two. "That's the only way to do one of those cars," he explained, noting that it gets the car low yet doesn't sacrifice cockpit space as channeling would. "You end up with a big tunnel down the middle of the car, but at least the floors are low and it saves your leg room and head room."
As crafty as his idea was, it has one flaw: a 3-inch vertical cross-section frame isn't very strong. So the car doesn't just have that simple frame; it has two. The side rails on the main part of the frame pick up the original body mounts, but there's actually another set of framerails about 6 to 8 inches inboard of the first two. "I didn't want to use something thick like a 6-inch-tall frame on it, so I doubled up. That gives it some strength," he reasoned.
The suspension under the car is an amalgamation of early Ford and Lincoln with a few aftermarket and unknown parts thrown in for good measure. "I got rid of a lot of my old parts by building this car," he noted. "A friend of mine had been building a '39 Lincoln convertible that had been an old custom. Well then he ended up with all sorts of parts cars and stuff that went with it--so everything he was throwing away I was running around behind him picking up." And that's where the front axle, spindles, and brakes came from.
Actually, the Lincoln front axle is a story unto itself. Design-wise, it's like a '35-48 Ford passenger-car suspension; however, being from a heavy car, it's a bit more robust. So too are the bigger brakes. They're the Bendix-action brakes of Lincoln legend, but they're not the highly prized ones like Lincoln rears or the ones on the fronts of later cars. No, these are the flat-faced orphans that don't fit on a Ford spindle. "The backing plates on the '39 (Lincoln fronts) are really deep inset," he explained. "What they're reproducing now are '41 fronts that they're calling '39s," qualifying that the '39 rear axle has the valuable shallow-plate brakes, but that they have parking-brake holes as well.
Bill mounted this suspension to the chassis with batwings and 36-inch-long Curtis-style hairpins from Speedway Motors. Since he converted the axle to '34-and-earlier perches to run it as a spring-over arrangement, he cobbled together a spring out of some cast-off chrome leafs. Above that spring is another curiosity to the hot rod world: a '38 Hudson grille, probably the only salvageable panel on a retired racecar languishing behind Bill's house. The rear suspension consists of a '40 axle and spring, but with Lincoln backing plates, 27-inch-long Speedway hairpins, and an open-drive conversion from Hot Rod Works.
 Frank Mack's T comes immediately...  Frank Mack's T comes immediately to mind, beyond that a hot rod with E&J headlights is a rarity. Still, they look the part on a vintage-themed car, and especially so on a "...real bastard of a car," as Bill calls this one. The lamps inboard of them are '39 Chevy running lights. Bill tried Houdaille lever-style shocks, but said that the tube-type shocks (aircraft style as they called 'em in the '40s) were better. |  The T-bird valve covers are...  The T-bird valve covers are not only the real deal; they're period-right for a Y-block-powered car. They're place markers in the sense that they establish the surface finish to which all the other parts on the car aspire. |  The McCulloch supercharger...  The McCulloch supercharger on this engine is far from obsolete, and the proof is in its creator's name: Robert Paxton McCulloch. The VS57 like this one debuted in 1953 and is the ancestor for the Paxton Novi. The VS designates this one as a variable-speed unit that compensates for low-speed use. |
 Along with the Flathead, the...  Along with the Flathead, the Ford Y-block was about the prettiest engine Ford ever built. This one sports a set of '57/'58 ECZ-G heads and a similar-vintage four-barrel manifold--one of the best performers for a Y-block. |  If you want headers for a...  If you want headers for a Y-block you're pretty much resigned to making them. Bill made these from a Headers by Ed flange and 1 -inch mandrel bends. To muzzle the bark from the 3-inch pipes behind them, Bill stripped the cans off Smithy mufflers and crammed the cores in the ends of the pipes. |  The '39 wheel and column are...  The '39 wheel and column are refugees from an unknown project. Bill took about 14 inches out of that '49 Ford dash to fit it. Though the round shaft suggests an old shift tower, the tranny below the tunnel is a side-shift Ford T15 job. |